lauraodonnell86

Next up: St. Maarten!

We decided to get in a taxi and head to Great Bay beach. We've always seen this beach from the ship but had never visited. It was $3 per person, per way by land taxi. I did not check on the water taxi but I know that is an option. The beach was gorgeous. We purchased 2 chairs and an umbrella for $25 and we convinced the guy to throw in a free bucket of beer!

We tried to eat at a restaurant called Caribbean Blend but after waiting 45 mins for some chicken wings, we left money for the drinks and walked away.

1st day of the 2nd week: St. Croix. We love St. Croix and have always gone to Rhythms at Rainbow Beach to enjoy our day. We didn't think we needed to change anything so that is what we did! It is a very short (2-3 min) taxi ride to the beach for $3 per person, per way. At Rainbow Beach, they have adirondack style chairs for $5 each and full loungers for $10 each. The umbrella is $10 as well. We opted for an adirondack and a lounger.

We love eating at the restaurant here and you can't beat the view!

As we came back to the ship, the view of the ships in port was just beautiful!

The other ship is the Carnival Fascination. We noticed that there were no passengers on the ship. I just recently read that they are housing FEMA workers for a little while longer there. It also looked like they were working on the ship as part of a pre-refurbishment.

We were in a Junior Suite for the 1st week and here is a picture of the room (1584)

We loved the extra space, the full tub/shower, and the extra wide balcony.

The 2nd week, we were in a balcony stateroom (1056) right off of the Centrum elevators. The location was amazing as we just went up 1 deck to the Windjammer and we were right at our room after getting off of the elevators. We never had any issues with noise from the Centrum. I didn't get any interior pictures as it was just like a normal balcony room but the balcony is extra long. We did enjoy 2 loungers, 2 chairs and a table. (can't see the loungers in the picture)

Time for a sea day, and a beautiful, sunny day it was! Final day of the cruise.

Waiting for the belly flop competition to begin!

A quick note that the roof in the Solarium was open every port day until 4pm. It was nice to have the sun!

When was the muster drill on the first day? Also, wondering if you happen to have the name of the MDR menu for each night? Thanks in advance!

The muster drill was at 5:45pm both weeks we were on. No I do not have the names for the menus. They switched them up though between the 2 weeks and they told us they were new menus starting on January 14th. The dessert is now on the menu with the appetizer and main course so you order dessert in the beginning with everything else. :confused:

Our next stop is probably our favorite Caribbean island: Barbados! Where it's always sunny, hot and the sand is like powdered sugar!

We love going to Boatyard Beach on Carlisle Bay. It's about a 5 min taxi ride from the port. It is $5 per person. To get into Boatyard, it is $20 per person. With that comes, 2 chairs and an umbrella, 2 welcome drinks, free snorkeling with the turtles and at a ship wreck, a rope swing, trampoline and iceberg in the ocean AND your taxi ride back to the ship! It's really a great deal and we love eating at their restaurant as well. You can only use their facilities if you have paid the entry fee.

Also, they do sell out by about 11am so if you want a spot, get there early!

Luckily, we were feeling better for St. Lucia! I've always thought the port here is beautiful.

We hopped in cab and went to Rodney Bay - Reduit Beach. It was $28 round trip for both of us and we paid $15 for 2 chairs and an umbrella.

Our next stop was Antigua. Both my husband and I had a head cold so we decided to stay on the ship for the day. We were bummed because we love the beaches of Antigua.

View from the ship

Next stop: St. Kitts! There is always a rain cloud over this mountain top and it's so beautiful! See the rainbow?

We had been to Carambola Beach Club in the past and fell in love so we decided to stick with what we knew! It was $4 per person, per way to Carambola. So $16 RT total for us was very welcome compared to what we paid in St. Thomas! We paid $30 for 2 chairs and an umbrella.

We just got back from a Back to Back on Jewel of the Seas out of San Juan. I wanted to do a small review of the cruise and mainly talk about the islands. Cruise Critic has been so helpful to me as I plan our cruises so I wanted to pay it forward. Let me know if you have any questions along the way!

I will start with our first port of call: St. Thomas.

We decided to go to Magen's Bay since we had never been there before. The taxi ride was $10 per person, per way and it was $5 per person to get onto the beach. So it was $50 for us to get there and back and into the beach. We decided not to buy chairs because there was plenty of space for us to lay our towels down. The beach was beautiful and we enjoyed ourselves.

Headed back to the Jewel!

View looking down from an upper deck to the Centrum.

Booked a guarantee JS for a January cruise through an internet TA. I have never booked a guarantee on RCCL before. I keep checking my on-line check-in screen but I'm not sure that will reflect it. The TA isn't much help--I knew that from the get--just used them to get the OBC. Will I be notified?

If you go to the My Cruises and then click on the reservation number, it will be under the stateroom section if it has been assigned. For our January cruise, we switched to a JS GTY and got assigned within 2 days since we'd already made our final payment. But that's how I found out, just by going to the reservation online. Good luck!

Oh noooo! We get on January 14th. We got on Adventure last year after an outbreak and it was the cleanest ship I've ever been on!!! Fingers crossed that it is gone TODAY and no one else gets it! Enjoy your cruise!!

I pulled the trigger and booked for Jan 19th 2020

I have a ton of time to watch for a better room, once available I'll grab it or deal with what I have either way I'll be sailing the southern Caribbean :D

 

Patty

I created a roll call for this cruise and also for Jan 12th, 2020. You can find it on the Freedom of the Seas Roll Call board. It's not searchable yet through the Roll Call Tool. Come on over and join us! :)

I guess my 75% hearing loss helps. My wife mentioned the noise, but I slept great.

We are usually awake until at least midnight anyways so we aren't too worried about it! We sleep sooo good on cruises. If it's bad though, I'll come back and report for future cruises!

I've sailed this class of ship several times...so just my personal opinion:

 

#8024 = much to far forward regardless of it being a portside.

#8538 = a connecting cabin (no way would I ever recommend one)

#8590 = yes, a hump....small balcony (if you don't mind) but great midship location.

#8648 = really far aft (I only like the true afts which makes the walk worth it)

 

Given those options I would go with #8590 and continue looking since it's possible something else might pop up before cruise date. If not I would be happy with this location.

Since you've sailed this class many times, do you have any thoughts on cabin 1056? From what I've seen, looks like a nice central location and also a big balcony. Any opinions?

GTY options are not always offered on every sailing or on every category.

Good to know!! Thanks Bob! You are a wealth of info!!

Glad it worked out. Some people are not so lucky when they mention the GTY.

I didn't mention it, but he did. So I wonder why anyone would ever book non GTY with this new info that I have?!?! I can understand if someone wants a specific room but we really aren't that picky as long as we are somewhere mid ship or aft! Guess we'll be booking Balcony GTY from here on out if it saves us any money!

I'm shocked at the number of rooms still available for our upcoming Jewel B2B. I called and switched our room to a higher deck and large balcony for our 2nd week and there were MANY rooms available still. I've got to think it has something to do with the hurricanes. We were originally on Adventure of the Seas until it got placed in dry dock and we were booted. :loudcry: So I thought Jewel would be full from all of the people coming from Adventure. Guess things have a way of changing!

Thanks again for the info everyone!

I would suggest you call the UK site before you call, I found the US site showed some, UK site showed all!

It worked! WOOT! Thanks guys! Got to switch to a non connecting Junior Suite! He even mentioned the GTY that I got and didn't seem to have an issue with it! :D

Go for it, let us know how it works out.

This is my first guarantee as well, I just switched to guarantee due to the low price. I read lots on cruise critic before switching and found this out.

Again, go to the UK site to get the list of available cabins and then call in with your choice.

Booking.royalcaribbean.co.uk

I was actually able to see the available cabins on the US site as well. There are only showing to be 4 cabins available but I may still call and see what they say. Hoping the 2nd week of our B2B comes down in price so we can get a Junior Suite for that too! (y)

You bet!!!

Once the cabin is assigned you can switch with a phone call! Go to the UK version of RC, go through the motions of booking and all the available cabins will come up in each category. Choose one and call into the RC 800 number on your confirmation and you will be switched. Must be same category. I don’t really mention it is a guarantee, just that I would like to switch cabins.

Cabin availability does change so check back later if you wish. I changed a few times before I settled on one. A best kept secret for sure....

WOW that's awesome! This is the first time we've done a GTY so I'm not really familiar with all of the ins and outs! I will try that tonight because the one we got is a connecting stateroom and I wasn't too fond of that. Thanks!

You know that you can call in once your cabin is assigned and change to any available cabin in the same category. We were assigned cabin 1000 at the very front of the ship and changed to 8578, midship.

You can switch cabins even when you are on a GTY?

We will be sailing on Liberty in May 2018. This will be the biggest ship we've done so far with the biggest being Adventure as of now. We are excited to try Freedom class because we sail from San Juan every January and the Freedom is coming to San Juan for our Jan 2019 B2B!

Thank you all for the wealth of information here!

Thanks for posting. I sail in a couple weeks but was able to upgrade from balcony to junior suite for similar price, but Royal gets to choose the room. Now it's a fun little mystery to see where we end up (what room).

I did the same thing for Jan 14th. It only took a day to get assigned our room. You should be able to go to "My Cruises" and click on the reservation and it should be updated on there! (y)

I should hire you to be my TA with that price tracking! WHEW! I thought I was good but dang! Can't wait to see pics of ABCs. Were there last January and loved them!

Adventure in the back.

 

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LOVE Adventure!!!! :hearteyes::hearteyes: Thanks for the pic Bill!